Alberta man pleads guilty to 1st-degree murder in Hinton homicides of mother and young son
CBC
Warning: This story contains details of sexual assault and murder that readers may find distressing.
A convicted sex offender has pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in the 2021 killings of a 24-year-old woman and her 16-month-old son in Hinton, Alta.
Robert Keith Major, who appeared in court virtually from the Edmonton Remand Centre on Monday morning, pleaded guilty to killing Mchale Busch and her toddler, Noah McConnell.
Major had initially been charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of indignity to human remains. Those charges were later changed to two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of interfering with human remains. The charges of interfering with human remains have been stayed.
Court of Queen's Bench Justice Marta Burns convicted Major on Monday after he entered his guilty pleas.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in November.
According to an agreed statement of facts, Major intentionally killed Busch before suffocating her son in the afternoon on Sept. 16, 2021.
Busch and her fiancé, Cody McConnell, had recently moved to the town of Hinton, about 300 kilometres west of Edmonton, so McConnell could work in the oil and gas industry.
They lived in a low-rise apartment building with their son. Their suite was next to Major's.
Edmonton police had issued a public warning in 2017 when Major was released into the community, saying they had reasonable grounds to believe he would commit a sexual offence against a woman, including children, again.
McConnell told CBC in September that the family had no idea about his criminal history.
According to the agreed statement of facts, it is unknown how Busch ended up in Major's apartment.
Months earlier, he had asked a female janitor multiple times to enter his apartment — she declined — and a female neighbour had also refused to do so, reporting an interaction to the building's landlord.
Earlier in the day on Sept. 16, Major had offered to clean up mud outside Busch's apartment. The mud was believed to be from her fiance's work boots.
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